Chapter 4

Chapter Four

Greta

I’ve always had a volatile temper. Once, in second grade, my father had to come pick me up from school early from the principal’s office. I’d kicked over a bookshelf in class because the pudding cup was missing from my lunchbox. Some might say that’s an overreaction, but hey. When you’re expecting chocolate, the absence of chocolate is unacceptable. That’s just a basic fact.

Do I not have every right to slap this cocky bastard?

Who demands a wife as a contingency to a sports contract?

That is insane.

Also insane? The fact that when I walked into the conference room and saw the relentlessly gorgeous point guard—the one who haunted my dreams last night—my first reaction was excitement. It started in the crown of my head and traveled all the way down to my toes, leaving a trail of fire behind. That heavy-lidded way he watches me, his strapping body poised to move at all times, touches a place deep inside of me. Makes me ache, makes me want to forget that I don’t trust athletes.

The slap I deliver across his chiseled face is a reminder to the both of us. Furthermore, it’s a rebuke for trying to trap me. For using his influence to steer my life in a direction I didn’t choose myself.

The sharp sound rings down the empty, carpeted hallway.

He doesn’t react how I expect.

I expect him to call me crazy or recoil in shock.

But without missing a beat, Eric surges forward, grabs both of my wrists and walks me backward, pinning me to the wall. Hard enough to make me gasp. His mouth moves open and hot down my neck, then back up to breathe my name heavily into my ear. Cutting sideways to my mouth and kissing me roughly. Possessively.

Eric’s tongue rakes over mine, his thumbs pressing into the pulses of my wrists, hips locking me between him and the wall. Rocking into me, letting me feel the huge outline of flesh behind the belt of his dress pants. The kiss is blatant, sexual. Frenzied. And it pulls me along in its swift current, demanding participation.

Lord, oh lord, he tastes good. Our kiss has this perfectly suctioned pull and push, give and take, and before I know what I’m doing, I’m opening my mouth in shameful invitation, moaning for more of his invasion. Rubbing my breasts on the front of his crisp white button-down, growing lightheaded when my nipples coil.

Just when I’m beginning to wonder if a woman can climax from a kiss alone, Eric breaks away. Frames my jaw in his hand, squeezing lightly, tilting my face up. I’ve never been more physically vulnerable in my life than in this moment, caught between this athlete in his prime and a hard place, my body weakened from the kiss, jaw cradled in a hand big enough to equal two of mine.

“Are you calm now?” he asks through labored breaths.

The word calm turns my vision red at the edges and I start to struggle, shoving at his chest, only to have his hips scoop me up and flatten me again, this time with that hard, male appendage pressed up tight between my thighs. And he’s still holding my jaw, not in a way that hurts, just in a way that leaves no doubt about who is in charge. God help me, my panties turn sodden. The fight goes out of me and I whimper, rubbing my sex against his, toes curling in my sneakers.

“We don’t hit, little girl,” he rasps in my ear. “You use your words.”

Those words—little girl—should make me want to throat punch somebody, namely Eric, but they don’t. They steal my breath. The way he speaks to me is disciplinary, like I’m a child, but I definitely don’t feel like one. I feel like more of a woman than ever. His tone and chastisement make me feel feminine and coveted and sexy. What is happening here?

“Now I’ll ask you again.” He sucks the sensitive spot just beneath my earlobe. Sucks it long and hard enough to make me pant, my eyelashes fluttering. “Have you calmed down?”

“Yes,” I whisper, unevenly. “Yes.”

“Next time you slap me, angel, you’ll be sucking me off from your knees before the sting wears off. I’ll find a way to make that temper work for both of us. Is that clear?” I think he’s going to back off, but he fists my hair, instead, pulling my head back and slowly licking all the way up my exposed throat. “I’m going to give you this later,” he says hoarsely, bucking his hips once and catching my sharp cry with his mouth. “But right now, angel, we’re going to talk.”

I don’t think I regain consciousness until we’re halfway down the hallway.

Our fingers are interlocked and he’s guiding me toward the luxury boxes, located on the same floor. He opens the door of a box owned by a famous beer company, pulling me inside. The space is air conditioned, smelling of expensive leather, lavishly furnished. The arena where people will chant Eric’s name is spread out below, quiet, but impressive. When I was a kid, I thought the arena was a magical place, but as I grew older, it became a synonymous with my lack of power. My lack of control over my own life.

That’s what I’m thinking about when Eric sits down on the leather couch and pulls me into his lap. If my posture is stiff, I blame it on the view. Blame it on the reminder I got in the conference room of how decisions are rarely mine to make.

Why then do I like being manhandled by Eric so much?

Isn’t his authoritative treatment the same as being told what to do?

How can I loathe one and crave the other?

“Greta,” Eric says, threading his fingers into my hair and gently tilting back my head. Holding me just like that, gaze on the ceiling, his breath in my ear. “I don’t want to make you agree to anything against your will. How do I make you mine? How do I make you need to be mine?”

“You can’t.”

He growls against my ear, that thick part of him pulsing between the split of my bottom. “Explain.”

Dare I? Open up to this man like that? In surrendering to him physically (mostly) I’ve already given up so much ground. Telling him what’s in my heart seems like a risk. What if he gains ground there, too?

That said, I can’t help but be grateful that he wants to listen. That he postponed the signing of an eight-figure contract to have this discussion when he probably could have strong-armed me into agreeing to his terms. And so I find myself confessing to this multi-faceted man. This man who defends me in a club, kisses me with violent passion, makes demands, then gentles his tone. I can’t seem to predict him for the life of me. They say the same thing about him on the basketball court. You never know which move the Silent Assassin will make next.

“My parents got divorced when I was eleven.” I swallow, feeling his gaze on the movement of my throat. “I’d barely seen my father growing up. He was always coaching. Always on the road. So when they split, it was only natural that I’d go to live with my mother. But my father was worried about his reputation being hurt. So he…paid her off. He basically purchased me to avoid a custody battle and to make himself seem like a dedicated father.”

I don’t realize my eyes are filling with tears until Eric swipes the moisture away with the warm pads of his thumbs.

“It hurt. Being abandoned like that, just because a man desired it. Since then, I’ve watched money buy men whatever they want, making the women in their lives…commodities to trade. I swore that would never be me again, so I vowed to stay away from athletes. And what happened in the conference room is exactly why. You’re proving me right, Eric.”

“No.” His voice is a harsh scrape of sound. “I only want to make you happy.”

“You want to make yourself happy.”

He throws me down on the leather couch and climbs on top of me, caging me in with his forearms and pressing our foreheads together. “I can do both.”

Don’t rub against him. Don’t do it.“I’ll never be happy in an arrangement I was forced to make.”

His breath pelts my mouth, his thick, athletic body vibrating with intensity on top of mine. For the second time since we’ve left the conference room, I’m pinned, unable to escape, and he seems incapable of not trapping me. It’s like he can’t help it. And the visible display of his infatuation with me is exciting when it shouldn’t be. My legs shouldn’t be eager to wrap around his hips, I shouldn’t be so breathless for another kiss. But I am. I want him to drop his weight completely and rock his hips into the cradle of mine. Want him to call me little girl again.

Once again, he makes a move I wasn’t anticipating.

“I want you to be with me of your own free will, Greta.” He tugs down the strap of my sports bra, exposing my right breast, touching my distended nipple with the very tip of his tongue and shooting a jolt of lust down to my toes. And when he laves it more thoroughly, looking me right in the eye, a moan breaks from my throat. “I won’t force you to be my wife. Not when it’ll hurt you and cause you not to trust me. Jesus, angel. That’s the last thing I want.”

Did I hear him correctly? “Really?”

“Really.” He pulls down the opposite bra strap, stripping the entire garment down to my waist. “I’m asking now, Greta. Not demanding.” He saws his tongue gently over my left nipple, sending wicked tingles to my core, making me restless underneath him on the couch. “I’m asking you to give me a chance. Just a chance.”

I can’t believe it.

He listened to me and…and changed course.

My words mattered to him. They made a difference.

It’s such an unusual occurrence in my life, I’m almost suspicious.

“What does that mean?” He rubs the flat of his tongue over a hard bud and I whimper. “G-give you a chance?”

Eric lifts his head, blue eyes brilliant with hunger. “It means come home with me, tonight, of your own free will. It’s my challenge to keep you there. Make you want to stay forever and be my wife.”

“And you’ll sign the contract regardless?”

He nods once, grudgingly. “I hate leaving this up to chance, but I want your trust too badly. I don’t want you to put me in the same category as the rest of the men in your life. I can’t expect you to believe I’m different if I don’t walk the walk.”

I’m suddenly so turned on, I can barely form a coherent sentence. “It’s, um…hot. It’s so hot that you listened. What…who are you?”

Eric leans down and speaks flush with my mouth. “I’m the man who is going to ride you ragged tonight.” He charts a path down my throat with his tongue, licking across my chest from one peak to the other, capturing the bud and sucking it noisily. “And we’re going to find out why you love being called little girl so much, aren’t we? Never called anyone that in my life. But you…that’s your name. Isn’t it, angel?”

Flushing, I nod, unable to give him anything but the truth when I’m looking him in the eye. “I’m a virgin, Eric.”

The way he pauses, tongue mid-lick of my nipple, hair falling into his eye, might be the sexiest vision available on all of planet earth. “A virgin.” He visibly turns that piece of information over and over in his head. When he speaks again, his voice is threadbare, deeper, resonating in my tummy. “I’m still going to ride you ragged, little girl. No help for it.”

I start to tremble.

Not in fear. No, I’m overcome by his words. What he’s doing to me. The flex of his thighs on mine, the way we’ve begun breathing in tandem, that promissory bulge wedged between my thighs, pulsing, elongating.

“I want to go home with you now,” I whisper, my fingers gathering bunches of the front of his shirt, knees scooting open, inviting him to press deeper. “Eric…”

“You’re horny,” he grates softly in my ear.

My nod is embarrassingly eager.

His groan raises goosebumps everywhere on my flesh. “One fuck and you’re going to be whining for it all the time, aren’t you?” He yanks my knees up around his hips and bears down, giving me one rough thrust and I scream into my closed mouth. “Yeah, I’ll be bringing you on the road with me, won’t I? Banging you before and after games. Halftime if you need it. Going to walk out onto the court smelling like your sweet little pussy and I’m going to love it.”

He’s humping me now. Roughly. Through our pants.

Staring me right in the eye, upper lip curled in a snarl.

And I want it.

I think I’ve had an orgasm before. Once when I was taking a bath, I found a spot between my legs that felt really nice to touch, but…wait, the more he drags that ridge up and down the seam of my yoga pants, the more I’m starting to think orgasms don’t merely feel nice. They’re like living things clawing to get free. That’s what I’m experiencing now, this burning grind of my intimate muscles, the lack of oxygen or rational thought. Just sinking my fingers into his juicy athlete’s butt and yanking, yanking him into the juncture of my thighs.

Oh lord, oh lord, what’s coming?

There’s a knock at the door.

“Eric? Greta?”

It’s my father.

If anything, Eric’s hips move faster, his expression turning into a mask of possessiveness. “Not stopping. Can’t stop. Tell him we’ll be right there,” he grunts, shoving my knees higher, folding me in two, body punching and grinding into mine, couch springs complaining loudly beneath us, the sound mingling with our panting breaths. Deep in my sex, there’s a quickening. A glorious inferno of sensation that won’t be held back, scrambling my brain.

And so I’m looking Eric right in the face when I call out, “I-I’m coming, Daddy.”

Something primal flares in Eric’s eyes and he makes a choked sound, his hard body stiffening. Warmth rushes between my legs, his lower body making jerky, stuttered movements. He grinds down roughly, baring his teeth and pushing me over the finish line, which I am quite sure I’ve never been over before now, because my God, I’m whining into his mouth like a baby. He muffles the euphoric sound at the last second, his own throat issuing long, gritty groans that pulsate along my tongue. And there was something, an extra something about looking this man in the eye and saying the word daddy that holds me in thrall, makes me tremble that much harder on the way over the cliff.

We lie there for long moments after the waves of pleasure fade into a glow, his mouth moving possessively but lazily over mine, his hips still pumping slowly, as if the movement is unconscious. Casual ownership that should make me want to slap him again. It doesn’t, though. I’m tripping through a forest of wonder, amazed than another human being can make me forget myself so completely.

I’ll have to be really careful with this man.

Or I might actually break my rules and end up his wife.

The fact that I’m even contemplating such a thing jolts me, inviting Eric’s scrutiny. He opens his mouth to say something when there is another, more insistent knock on the door. “The press is here to get a shot of you signing the contract, Bentley,” comes my father’s voice from the other side. “We need you out here.”

It seems to cause Eric physical pain to roll off me and stand. Immediately, he pulls me to my feet as well, rocking me side to side in the cradle of his arms, his chin resting on top of my head. “Do I get my chance with you, Greta?” he asks, gruffly.

It’s no mystery that I’m as stubborn as they come, but I can’t help but want to give this man what he’s asking for. He took my concerns into account and adapted. He compromised…and I really like that. So I find myself nodding into his chest, letting him fix my clothing and smooth my hair. He brings me into the small bathroom and holds a hand towel soaked in cool water to my neck, kissing me on the forehead. And then he takes my hand and walks with me out of the private box, looking my father right in the eye as we pass, his expression communicating one thing and one thing only.

Mine.